Held back for a year since its 2011 Toronto unveiling, this red state-of-mind comedy from Brit director Jim Field Smith and first-time writer Jason A. Micallef is cynically timed to take advantage of election season. Any real-world comparisons between the Sarah Palin-like Laura Pickler (Jennifer Garner) and her African-American opponent, Destiny (Yara Shahidi), are encouraged in this over-churned movie that presents itself as a "cutthroat story of greed, blackmail, sex, and butter." But the adversaries aren't engaged in a muckraking presidential race. No, they're slinging the fatty portion of milk that's usually reserved for cooking, using it to sculpt oily yellow masterpieces in Iowa's annual Mastery in Butter Competition. The hope-filled yes-we-candidate is 11 years old, not too young for her to realize a political truth: "White people are weirdos." Still, despite an appealing cast of oddballs (Rob Corddry, Kristen Schaal), the satire spreads pretty thin.

Review: Straw Dogs Remaking, polishing, and in effect housebreaking what should've remained untamed and feral, Rod Lurie's new version of the Peckinpah classic follows the original's story beats closely, and so the devil is in the details.

Review: Happy Feet Two Lovely to look at despite the 3D, and sometimes bordering on the psychedelic, this crack-brained morality tale blends the sublimely weird and the cloyingly awful as it preaches once again the paradox that you should be true to yourself as long as you are in step with everyone else.

Review: Jack and Jill Director Dennis Dugan's second Adam Sandler vehicle of the year turns out to be even worse than Just Go with It.

Review: Being Elmo Just in time for the release of The Muppet Movie on November 25 comes Constance Marks's look at the man behind the pilly-fabric Sesame Street character.

Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone Lev Anderson and Chris Metzler's documentary details Fishbone's quarter-century journey from musically-diverse South Central middle school classmates to becoming one of the most influential Los Angeles bands of the '80s.

Review: The Iron Lady Meryl Streep's two films with Phyllida Lloyd, Mamma Mia and this silly biopic, demonstrate that even when the world's greatest actress is at the peak of her powers — whether dramatic, comic, or musical — it's not enough.

Review: Carnage As befits someone with jail time hanging over his head, Roman Polanski does his best work in close quarters. From Knife in the Water , to Repulsion , to The Tenant and The Pianist , he's a master of claustrophobic close encounters, and as such has a good time adapting Yasmin Reza's play, God of Carnage .

Review: Dreileben Taking a cue from Kieslowski's Three Colors by way of the British Red Riding series, this TV trilogy from three German directors of the Berlin School starts out with a creepy aura of dread and mystery and ends with contrived and unsatisfying resolutions.

WOMEN WITH SWORDS: KING HU AND THE ART OF WUXIA | March 12, 2013 Decades before women took center stage in the one-two punch of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill , King Hu (1932-1997; the subject of a retrospective at the HFA) put swords in the hands of a soaring heroine in Come Drink with Me.

REVIEW: EMPEROR | March 12, 2013 Yes, Tommy Lee Jones plays the "supreme commander" of the US forces in this historical drama from Peter Webber ( Girl with a Pearl Earring ) that takes place after the Japanese surrender in World War II, and the Oscar winner puts in another towering performance.

REVIEW: 21 AND OVER | March 05, 2013 As one of the Asian stereotypes in this hit-or-(mostly)-miss comedy from writer/directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore says, "Fuck kids these days. Every one of you is drunk, stupid, and fat."

REVIEW: THE LAST EXORCISM PART II | March 06, 2013 Now that the shaky-cam nonsense has been left behind, what remains are textureless, overlit, sub-TV-quality visuals that only accentuate the fact that our protagonist, Nell Sweetzer (Ashley Bell), is at least a decade older than the 17-year-old exorcised sect-escapee that she's playing.

REVIEW: JACK THE GIANT SLAYER | March 06, 2013 Stop me if you've heard this one before: a farm boy dreams of adventure, finds it, and falls in love with a princess along the way. (For everyone's sake, let's just hope she's not his sister.)